Stepanova spoke out against artificial competition among skaters

CHELYABINSK, December 21, Andrey Simonenko. Repeated winners of the European Championships and the winners of the Russian championships in ice dancing, Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin, said that they would not like competition in this discipline to be created artificially in Russia.
Stepanova and Bukin scored 86.90 points for rhythmic dance on Thursday, which is less than their scores at the previous tournament — the Russian Grand Prix stage in Moscow.
“We felt free, we can officially say that we returned to the form we were in. This is not bad, let’s start from it. It’s a blurred impression, it seems like we skated better, but got lower marks here,” Bukin told reporters. “I’d like to hear.” concrete adequate opinion on this matter.»
“In my experience, the Russian championship is just the peak, you can get not very good points at previous tournaments, but here everyone is in excellent shape,” the skater added, answering the question whether there could be more stringent judging standards at the Russian championship. — Everyone is progressing, everyone is working, but I don’t want the competition to be somewhat artificial. That’s why I want to find out what was wrong so that we would go to training and work 300 times harder. (Coach) Alexander Vyacheslavovich (Zhulin) in my ear said, everything is clear and clear. Censored, and not what you might think.»

Stepanova also noted that the ratings could have been higher. “They said that we don’t have enough competition in Russia, apparently, this is how it is created. We compare ourselves with Western guys. It’s clear that the scores are not compared, but they still glance at them. That’s why we want to find out what was wrong «. But Vanya told me — let's try to get a buzz, I think we succeeded. We are pleased with ourselves, but there is a question,» she said.
“»Before the break we took, it so happened that there was the first couple — Vika (Sinitsina) with Nikita (Katsalapov), then we went, and there was a fight for third place. Now, when we looked at the guys and at ourselves, we see that we are taking this (first) place. It’s not for nothing that we are two-time champions of Russia,” the figure skater noted.